Tuesday, June 30, 2026
Science

A tabletop ring of atoms brings the universe's doomsday vacuum collapse into the lab

Physicists in China have simulated the effect of "false vacuum decay": a phenomenon believed to play out constantly in the seemingly empty expanses of space, and which one theory even suggests could bring an abrupt end to the entire universe. In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, Yu-Xin C...

A tabletop ring of atoms brings the universe's doomsday vacuum collapse into the lab
Image: Phys.org
Physicists in China have simulated the effect of "false vacuum decay": a phenomenon believed to play out constantly in the seemingly empty expanses of space, and which one theory even suggests could bring an abrupt end to the entire universe. In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, Yu-Xin Chao and colleagues at Tsinghua University, Beijing, mimicked the effect using a simple tabletop experiment.

Originally published at Phys.org

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